


Just Exactly Great Enough

by satonawall



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 11:45:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satonawall/pseuds/satonawall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Santana has a crush on one of her night time regulars. She’s pretty sure it’s not going to go anywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Exactly Great Enough

Santana hated the night shift. It fucked up her sleeping rhythm and the extra pay she got for the night was shit, not to mention no one tipped well at three pm.  
  
And the customers. Either they just dropped by to get a coffee to go and to act like the fact that they were still awake was Santana’s fault and she should be punished for it or then they parked themselves in one table at ten pm when the better coffee shop on the other side of the street closed, ordered one cup and began working on their college assignments that were probably due the following day. Occasionally they’d get up to get a refill, and then they’d go back to tearing out their hair and muttering to themselves about Aristotelian philosophy or quantum physics or whatever it was that they were having their nervous break-down over.  
  
“Hi, Santana. I love that smudge on your apron, it looks just like Riemann’s hypothesis.”  
  
And then there was Brittany.

Brittany was, or at least sometimes it felt like she was, the only reason Santana hadn’t quit a long time ago and said goodbye to her dreams of graduating on top of her pre-law class after getting through college debt-free. (The debt-free part. She was the top of her class and she wasn’t going to give that up even if all the beautiful women disappeared off the face of the earth.) She was, to use a cliché, not like other people: she danced in around eleven pm almost every night Santana had a shift, ordered a blueberry muffin and sometimes hot chocolate (with whipped cream and sprinkles on top) and smiled throughout the night as she sprawled numbers on her napkin and sometimes called someone who Santana was pretty sure was the extremely prestigious maths professor who’d had a whole science building named after herself. So she was smart, and she was beautiful, and she’d told Santana she gave dance lessons (and that was before Santana had been dragged to the show of a local dance group and had been pleasantly surprised to see Brittany dancing the lead) so she was multi-talented, too, and sometimes on those rare nights when Brittany was not there Santana was quite sure she was just a figment of Santana’s imagination, created to cope with the horrible reality of a coffee shop night shift.

“You should ask her out,” Quinn had said the first time Santana had spent more time staring at her lunch than eating it, her mind still wrapped up in Brittany’s smile from the previous night.

Santana had almost spat out her water and ended up swallowing it far too quickly instead.

“Are you kidding?” she’d asked when she’d stopped coughing the water out of her lungs.

“Sounds like a good idea.” Mercedes had pointed at her with her spoon. “The way you talk about her, you sound like you’ll propose if you’re not careful. A date’s a way smaller commitment.”

“Yeah, like maths geniuses and dance prodigies frequently accept dates from their friendly local midnight barista.”

They had given her a sideways look, but Santana had decided to focus on her pasta and ignored it.

—-

Besides Brittany and earning money, the only good thing about working the night shift was that there were usually so little customers that Santana could clandestinely read for exams or do whatever else she wanted behind the counter.

“That looks wordy.”

“Um.” She shoved the research for the debate club’s annual Christmas dinner debate that Blaine had sent her under the counter. “That’s just my friend’s debate notes I’m supposed to go over. He goes way overboard with the research. Can I get you something?”

“Number three won’t show itself to me unless I get biscotti,” Brittany said very seriously. “I didn’t know you debate.”

“It’s just something for fun.” Santana reached for the biscotti in the display. “It’s some weird backwards acting practice for my friend, I signed up because he needed a partner. That, and it’s always nice to tell other people how incredibly wrong they are.”

“It is.” Brittany smiled at her as Santana gave her the plate with the biscotti. “Mary Ann says it’s the best thing you can do in a lecture theatre.”

Okay, so apparently not only could Brittany call the extremely prestigious maths professor at ass crack of dawn, apparently they were also on first name basis. Santana was really glad for all her faux self-confidence now.

“Sounds like a smart woman,” she said and watched as Brittany walked back to her table and began lightly frowning at the napkins again.

—-

“Seriously,” Quinn said, sighing, “please, do me a favour and ask her out already.”

Santana crossed her arms. “I don’t talk about her that much.”

“Not to be rude,” Blaine butted in, “but yes, you do.”

“Plus you’ve looked more and more like a love-sick puppy these past weeks.” Mercedes shook her head. “Not that it isn’t a good look on you, but I’m pretty sure ‘stupidly in love with my girlfriend’ would be an even better one.”

“I’m not listening to any one of you,” Santana said and put her hands to her ears.

It didn’t really help. She could still hear, as well as see, them laughing at her.

—-

The latest business school asshole with a two am coffee craving left, and so did the guy with the weird hair from table number seven, probably finished with his assignment if his victory cry was anything to go by. That left only Brittany, who’d just finished a phone call and was now furiously writing something down on an actual paper, for once.

Santana wiped down table number seven (she hoped the guy’s assignment was full of coffee stains; it would be a miracle if it wasn’t if the condition of the table was anything to go by) and was just on her way back behind the counter when Brittany’s voice stopped her.

“Could I get another cup of hot chocolate, please?”

“Yeah, sure.” Santana smiled at her. “The usual style?”

Brittany nodded.

Santana didn’t really like making coffee drinks, or any sort of drinks really (alcohol excluded, but they didn’t sell that), but there was something nice about putting sprinkles on whipped cream anyway. Maybe it was just Brittany.

“Here you go,” she said as she approached Brittany’s table.

Of course, that was the moment she tripped on her own feet and the hot chocolate flew out of her hand, happily missing Brittany but landing squarely in the middle of Brittany’s table, right where a few papers full of something that looked like numbers were.

Brittany jumped up, avoiding the chocolate spilling over the table.

Santana couldn’t move, she just stared.

“Oh my god,” she finally managed to get out, not daring to look at Brittany. “I’m so sorry, that must be-“

“I’ll have to eat so much more biscotti to make up for that,” Brittany said, and her voice sounded oddly cheery. “Mary Ann is not going to like it, she thinks I should start eating cashew nuts instead, but that’s only because she has a thing for number seven.”

“I’m so sorry,” Santana repeated. “How can I-“

She hazarded a glance at Brittany, and to her great surprise, Brittany was smiling brightly and not looking at all upset with the destruction of her hard work.

“It’s okay,” Brittany said. “The numbers speak to me and right now they’re screaming because I like sprinkles a lot more than they do, I can just write it all from memory.”

Right. Of course Brittany would be calm about things like this, it just highlighted how incredibly wonderful she was, and how Santana would never-

“Actually,” Brittany went on. “I’m really happy you tripped and made my notes swim in hot chocolate.”

Santana blinked. “Why?”

“Because you’re not perfect.” Brittany smiled widely. “And if you’re not perfect at everything after all, then I won’t be too afraid to ask you to go out with me.”

Santana blinked again, forcing her mouth closed from where it had hung open. “You- you thought I was too perfect to go out with you?”

“Yeah.” Brittany’s gaze dropped down to the floor. “You do great at school even though you have a job on the side, and you can make people believe you with just words and debate is like the most difficult club and you just do it for fun so-“

“I-“ She took a step closer to Brittany, willing Brittany to look up so that she could see Santana’s smile. “I thought the same about you, actually. Except you haven’t gone dropping any cups so I sort of-“ Brittany looked up, blinking like an owl, but there was a small smile forming that Santana kind of wanted to kiss. “I sort of still thought you were far too great to date me.”

“I’m not,” Brittany said. “I’m definitely just exactly great enough to date you.”

Santana wanted to laugh, giggle like she never wanted during a night shift, but she killed that impulse in favour of asking, “So, would you like to go out sometime, then?”

Brittany grinned at her. “Definitely. Once the numbers stop screaming I’m sure they’ll tell me when I’m free.”

“Great.”

For the rest of her shift, Santana couldn’t concentrate at all and almost spilled coffee all over a jock who probably would have been a lot less understanding than Brittany. However, she couldn’t really bring herself to care about that since, every time she glanced in the direction of Brittany’s table, Brittany was there, grinning right back.

She still hated the night shift, but she had to admit, it did have certain perks.


End file.
